According to the trailer, Duel has players build up battalion by collecting cards. You'll find over 200 character cards in all.

Your duties include developing your base camp, taking control of enemy territories, acquiring new troops by becoming a commander, and taking part in "3D character battles" featuring the same basic style as in the Valkyria Chronicle games." -- Source: andriasang

It seems to be a phase that various series seem to be taking lately. Gundam and Queen's Blade and nearly Sakura Taisen have all taken to browser based gameplay, just to name a few examples.

So I wouldn't call this a depressing cash-in (or at least not depressing), of course I'm more worried about SoA basically hanging on by threads at this point and not being able to bring out anything more than Sonic and the occasional PSO title, nevermind a new VC game when one actually comes out.

Of course these aren't new figures and they're all sold out, so it doesn't really matter. Japan is really good at the whole artificial scarcity thing...seems like everything in the figure world is a limited edition.

Yeah there are figures with the standard costumes, the only depressing thing I can see about the one with the swimsuit costume is that there's people buying that stuff for the wrong reasons. I don't see anything depressing with the figure itself though. ・ヘ・

Sad news indeed, here I was hoping for a Vita title where maybe they could pump out the same big areas as in VC1. On the other hand, part of this state that SoA is in is apparently their own fault. I mean, I don't live in a country where games get massive ads, or at least, just a few games here and there have, but from what I've heard in the US most Sega games don't get promoted.

Also, if Atlus and NISA which is much smaller companies can release games in short supply and make a profit how can't Sega ? I truly wish they at least released those "obscure" titles as downloadables. At least that's better than dropping them altogether.

To be fair though, the only difference that character has from her initial appearance in the first game is the lack of her normal outfit. The series has always been anime war as hell.

What is depressing though is Sega's continued refusal to understand what people saw in the first game to begin with (I mean, sure they realized other games could benefit from VC's gameplay mechanics, but the Shinning series is, if anything, even more painfully anime than all of VC and the game in question looks to be even a bigger step back from those established mechanics).